These are the Voyages of the Starship UK
by Flurblewig
Summary: Or: Five Alternate Histories of the Spacewhale. Satire, spoilers for 5.02 'The Beast Below.'


Title: These are the Voyages of the Starship UK or: Five Alternate Histories of the Spacewhale

Fandom: Doctor Who

Rating: PG13

Spoilers: 5.02 'The Beast Below' When I was talking about this ep, I said that so much of what happened was unnecessary and/or illogical -- but that without it, there wouldn't have been much of a story. That got me thinking....

Genre: Satire/comedy

Notes/Warnings: I mock because I love. I own nothing. Unbetaed, nitpicks & crit all welcome.

Summary: They say no good deed goes unpunished. The Spacewhale learns that ain't nothing but the truth.

* * *

**1. The One Where Nobody Is A Twit At All**

Solar flares: *toast the Earth*

Rest Of The World: What say we blow this joint till things cool down?

UK: Good call, let's go. *Builds spaceship, flies away*

Everybody: *lives happily ever after*

-end-

**2. The One Where Only Some Of The UK Are Twits**

Solar flares: *toast the Earth*

Rest Of The World, Including Scotland: Okay, we're off. Laters, UK! Hope you stocked up on a few bottles of SPF Five Billion.

UK: Woe! We don't know how they did it -- maybe they had a lot of helium balloons or they wished really, really hard -- but everyone's flown away and left us behind! We're all doomed!

Spacewhale: Um, hi there. I don't know if you noticed, but your planet is burning. Since you appear to be in need of some assistance, can I persuade you to ride on my back to safety?

UK: Hey, there's a spacewhale. That's handy. *shoots whale, locks it up, builds space ship around it*

Starship UK Chief Engineer: Artificial gravity generator, check. Air and water recycling units, check. Hydroponic gardening system for fresh fruit & veg, check. Yep, this looks like all we need to make the ship completely self-sustaining during a long space journey. Shame we haven't got time to add a way to make it fly on its own, but we can work on that once we're up and away. Oh, hold on a minute, what's this strange gizmo here?

Starship UK Deputy Engineer: This is the access panel that we hook the spacewhale's skull up to, so that we can shoot agonising electric shocks right into its brain.

Chief Engineer: Oh, okay.

Chief Engineer: ...

Chief Engineer: Wait, what?

Deputy Engineer: Hmm, yeah, now that I think about it, maybe we don't really need to do that. I suppose the first thing the spacewhale's going to want to do is get away from the burning planet, and then once it's in space it'll probably carry on going. That's kind of what spacewhales do, really. I mean, if we were building a submarine on the back of an ordinary sea whale, I don't suppose we'd need to stick a red hot poker up its arse to make it swim. Maybe I'll just dismantle this, then.

Chief Engineer: Good idea. You do that.

Starship UK: *launches*

Chief Engineer: *invents propulsion system, releases spacewhale*

Everybody: *lives happily ever after*

-end-

**3. The One Where Most Of The UK Are Twits**

Solar flares: *toast the Earth*

UK: *gets left behind, traps spacewhale, launches ship, flies away*

General Public: You know, we're not too sure about this spacewhale business. I know we need something to keep us in the air and Scotland nicked all the helium balloons, but it doesn't seem quite right to enslave and torture a sentient being. Aren't we supposed to be a nation of animal lovers?

Government: That's shopkeepers. Now stop worrying your pretty little heads about politics, go down the shops and get yourself something nice.

Liz 10: They've got a point, though. Maybe we should be doing something about this.

Government: Oh, all right then. *sets up fascist police state, fake democratic system, invents mindwipe technology, creates creepy mechanical hybrid overlords, builds infrastructure of tunnels and chutes to deliver protesters, underachievers and members of the RSPCA into the belly of the whale*

Liz 10: O-kay. Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of finding a way to make the ship fly.

Government: Didn't you hear the bit about Scotland and the helium balloons? Here, press this button. You'll feel much better.

Liz 10: *forgets*

General Public: *forgets*

Protesters: *get eaten*

Spacewhale: Burp. And, ouch.

Years: *pass*

Liz 10: I suspect there's something not quite right going on here. *Dons mask & gun, investigates in totally badass way*

Video Liz: Well done, Me. Now, quick! Accept my totally inadequate summary of the situation, believe that you have no choice and press the Forget button before you have a chance to do something crazy like think about it and realise what a load of rubbish it is!

Liz 10: *presses the button*

Spacewhale: Oh no, not again.

Everybody: *lathers, rinses, repeats*

-end-

**4. The One Where Everybody Is A Twit Except Amy And The Doctor**

Solar flares: *toast the Earth*

UK: *gets left behind, traps space whale, launches ship, flies through the galaxy ruthlessly mindwiping its citizens and torturing the whale*

Amy: *watches video, discovers the truth* Wow, that's really bad. Good job we arrived here so that we can do something about it. Right, then. Clearly the Protest button isn't going to lead to anything good so I'll have to press Forget. Luckily, there's a big Record button, which must have been sneaked in by the underground resistance movement so that people can save their lives by forgetting but leave themselves a message to carry on secretly plotting against the evil fascist government. Cool, I'm in!

Amy: *records a message, presses Forget*

Amy: Did I fall asleep? Ooh, what's this, a message? 'They're all twits, tell them they don't have to torture the spacewhale.' What could I possibly have meant by that? I'd better get the Doctor, he's good at stuff like this. He'll work it out.

The Doctor: *works it out* UK, seriously, WTF? And no, I don't want to hear about Scotland and the helium balloons. Look, it's blatantly obvious that none of this was ever necessary, that you've tortured this poor creature for 300 years for no good reason at all, created this whole creepily dysfunctional society around it and repeatedly mindwiped yourselves into previously unknown level of Twitdom, even for the stupid apes that you are. Let the spacewhale go, then pick a planet from the star chart and I'll start towing you there in the TARDIS until I can build you a warp drive. Should take me half an hour or so. Anyone got some toothpicks and an ipod?

Amy: Damn, he's good.

Spacewhale: Well, finally. *flies off to the nearest all-night galactic Superdrug for some aspirin*

Everybody: *lives happily ever after*

-end-

**5. The One Where Everybody Is A Twit Except The Spacewhale**

Story: *proceeds exactly as we saw it on screen*

Spacewhale: *flaps its tail hard enough to create a wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey wormhole and travels back 300 years*

Solar flares: *toast the Earth*

UK: *gets left behind*

Spacewhale: Fuck that shit, I'm out of here.

UK: Oh, bugger.

Spacewhale: *lives happily ever after*


End file.
